A New York jury has ordered former President Donald Trump to pay writer E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million for disparaging comments she made while president in 2019.
Ms. Carroll sued Mr. Trump for defamation, calling him a liar after she accused him of rape decades ago. The case, Ms. Carroll published in a memoir, in which she wrote that in 1996, Mr. Trump raped her in a luxury store in New York City.
In May of last year, another jury found Mr. Trump guilty of sexual misconduct and ordered him to pay $5 million. Mr. Trump has appealed the decision.
The second defamation trial relates to Mr. Trump's comments to Ms. Carroll when he was president, and the jury was to determine just how much money Mr. Trump would have to pay the writer. It is about two statements that he had made, in response to questions from journalists, referring to parts from the memoirs of the writer Carroll.
The former president continues to insist that the charges against him are false.
The verdict was handed down on Friday by a jury of nine, seven men and two women. Mr. Trump regularly attended the hearings of the second trial. But today he abruptly left the courtroom as Ms Carroll's lawyer was making closing arguments. He then returned to hear his lawyer's closing arguments.
Mr. Trump did not attend the first trial against him. He later expressed remorse and insisted on testifying at the second trial, but the judge restricted the former president, saying he had lost his chance to argue his innocence.
On Thursday, the day before the jury's verdict, Mr Trump sat in the witness stand for just a few minutes, during which he denied assaulting Ms Carroll, then left the courtroom saying: “this is not America.” .
During closing arguments, Ms. Carroll's lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, asked the jury to punish Mr. Trump sufficiently to stop, she said, a steady stream of public statements that have smeared Ms. Carroll as a liar.
It was at this moment that Mr. Trump left the courtroom. Today, the judge in the case warned that he would send Mr. Trump's lawyer, Alina Habba, to prison because she continued to speak even though he had informed her that her time was up. Lawyer Habba obeyed the judge's request.
Friday's jury decision comes as Mr. Trump cruises to a third straight victory in the presidential primaries. He has sought to turn the proceedings against him into an advantage, describing them as evidence of a system being used politically against him.
Although there is no evidence that President Joe Biden or anyone in the White House has influenced any of the legal cases against him, Mr. Trump's line of argument has resonated with his most loyal supporters, who view the proceedings with skepticism.